Adelson’s story claims that Super Bowl referee Jerome Boger’s weekly grades were changed, presumably to help him get the big assignment. You should read it, and you should also be aware that NFL spokesman Michael Signora responded in the story by saying that Boger’s grades were treated no differently than any other official’s.

All we know is this: The officiating in a game that won’t be played for nine more days is already under attack, and nobody provides more contorted agonies at that news than our own Jimmy Joe.

It has long been the position of this web site’s personal misery farm that NFL officiating is as poor as it is because the game is essentially ungovernable. Too many large men running into each other at high rates of speed with no compunction whatsoever about staying within even the most basic framework of the rules makes that so.

And if you don’t believe that, book some time at the bottom of a fumble some time. And cover up those delicates.

Moreover, the rulebook is an impenetrable mass of contradictions and absurdities that essentially falsify what you see with your own eyes and replay machines. In other words, you see a fumble, it isn’t, by rule. You see a clean tackle, it isn’t, by rule. You hear the National Anthem, it’s Gangnam Style.

By rule.

In short, it is a job that can’t be done, not by then men who do it now, not by younger, fitter fulltime employees. It is antisocial chaos with shiny hats and contradictory rules that are barely honored.

Our point here is that there is no way of telling whether Jerome Boger is or isn’t the right man for the job until he and his crew screw it up. And that the same could be said for Gene Steratore’s, or Tony Corrente’s, or Cleve Blakeman’s. A good call is a festival of hope in a hopeless situation.

And if grades got changed to honor an unworthy official, well, league offices have been messing with officiating in all sports, on the idiotic and largely disproven theory that they know better than the people who actually do it. They don’t. They can’t. And they want it anyway. They’re stupid that way.

All we know is this: if Boger’s crew drops a whopper at some point that offends the 49ers, Jim Harbaugh will lose his dome. He’ll throw a hat, he’ll jump with his knees hitting his chest, he’ll slam down his headset, he’ll carpet-F-bomb someone’s ears.

And we as a nation will be all the better for it. In the immortal words of both Bill Raftery and Bo Diddley, “Send It In, Jerome.”